Happy 2012!

And remember… if you want one, hurry!! They’re only available til the 15th!!

A special treat for my blog people…

A lot of people have asked me if my edition of porcelain figurines will be available by Christmas. Technically, the answer is no – I don’t have time to make the boxes for them that I want and to go back and forth to the post office, and still get them out to folks in time for the holidays. But! Since you asked, I decided to make some available without the box for a super limited time.

If you place your order between now and the 15th, you will get a porcelain girl at a very special price! Each one is handmade and unique (they are not made by casting molds; each one is hand-carved and original), and they are signed and dated on the bottom under the stand. They’re about 4 1/2″ tall, and there’s a mix of blue, pink, and purple dresses, and brown, blond, and reddish-haired girls.

Seriously, if you want one, get on it now – there’s not that many, the price is great, and there’s just a few days!! If you miss it this time, they will be re-released in February (along with the Girls With Souls) but priced higher and even fewer to go around.

I hope you like them!

But then, I’m also getting way too precious with things. I’m psyched with the way things are going, so I’m trying to keep it all special… but maybe I’m keeping it too special. So here, at least, is a sneak peak. I took this pic so that you could see me in relation to the work, and get a sense of the scale. Over the next couple of days, I’ll start scanning and photographing the work I’ve done and posting cleaner pics up here to look at.

But for now…

Get it? It’s a teeny-tiny painting on wood panel. It’s 5 x 7 inches. And it’s not painted directly on the panel; it’s actually collaged bits of paper that have acrylic on them, that come together for the image. (You can’t really tell any of this from the pic above, but hopefully between that picture and the scan later this week, it will be understandable.)

My plan is to make about 15 of these. I have several series of small works going on right now, so this is just one of a few different groupings I’m working on.

The fairs have changed a lot since the frothy days of the mid-2000s. There was a lot less of the craziness that marked previous fairs; fewer pop-up shows, guerrilla art actions, beach parades, and general wackiness. The container show and its sidekick the PS1 radio station are no longer there, and are sorely missed. But the shows are still solid, sales were up for everyone, and that meant a lot of good moods all around.

A guy I met in Miami told me that blog readers like to read “short, punchy lists” and that if I’m going to blog, that’s how I ought to do it. Okay! So in the spirit of Miami, I thought I’d recap my trip that way:

Best work at the big fair: Galerie Berinson, Unica Zurn. How the hell were these Zurns (there’s only one on the site but there were two in the booth) not in the retrospective? They’re the best work by the artist I’ve ever seen, and I’m a big fan so that says a lot.

Best suddenly super-hot material: Clay. As in, ceramics. Really. There were loads of ceramics-based works to be seen everywhere – each fair I went to had several different artists all suddenly working in clay. Cool, but weird that it’s suddenly popular.

Best chance meeting: Bumping into Andrea Bowers and Olga Koumoundouros, who were participating in Art Basel’s Art Public, who set up camp over where the containers and PS1’s sound stage used to be, giving out food and talking social justice ala Occupy Wall Street. The “sculpture” changed every day; here’s a snapshot of Thursday:

It was funky and raw. They invited activists from different local groups involved in housing advocacy to come and give talks every evening. Very, very different from the usual Art Basel public project! A nice respite from selling selling selling. By the time of my last visit, it seemed that everyone involved was getting the flu or otherwise exhausted; I hope they got home ok.

Best open-to-everyone party: Mr. Brainwash. Can it be true?? One of the very few non-official, pop-up spaces I encountered. I wanted to hate it, but I didn’t. I swear, if you squint in this picture, you can see a dj above that big can of “spilled paint.”

Anyway, it was truly a party atmosphere, very little posturing, and it is what it is (or it was what it was, I guess).

Worst thing about the fairs: The evil black hole the shuttle busses kept falling into en route to Wynwood. Also, the lack of signage for the shuttles, and general absence of a schedule. Basically, the shuttles blew. You had to allow 2 hours+ to make what should have been a 15 minute drive. And remember, time is short and there’s a million things to see. Yeah, that was fun.

Worst invite-only party: Bass Museum of Art. I’m not suggesting that these events have to be super exclusive, but there’s a difference between that and cramming as many people as you can into a space and calling it a party. You couldn’t see the art, you couldn’t see other people, you couldn’t move or breathe. Really not a good idea.

And last, but definitely not least:

Best cheap vegan eats: La Sandwicheria. Miami Beach isn’t known for good cheap food, let alone good, cheap, vegan food. But MY GOD. The veggie sandwich at this place was KILLER. It was one of those sandwiches you look at when it arrives and think, “Holy crap, I can’t possibly eat all of that.” And then ten seconds later, it’s completely gone. Whoa,  I could go for one right now.

Pics and more forthcoming…

I got this especially nice mention on the Hyperallergic blog, along with a video of the cards. Yay!

An aside:

You can probably tell that this blog is suffering while I deal with end-of-the-semester craziness + Miami stuff + art stuff + OWS stuff. But bear with me. I’ll be back in force very soon, promise.

I had absolutely no idea at the time that Occupy Wall Street was getting started; I was off looking at Hieronymus Bosch, Buckminster Fuller, and Paolo Soleri, and not really thinking about NYC very much. I was more interested in architecture and the environment and how they could come together to create a new kind of space, and also how thinking would have to shift to value different things that we’ve been taught, in order to make utopia work.

I was thrilled when I first heard people were camping at Zuccotti Park – to me, it was all just street theater, but I like street theater! I brought them rain ponchos and vegan ice cream. In the first two weeks, it was a very small gathering, just a few dozen people sleeping out in the open and carrying signs. The media complained that they didn’t know what they stood for, but what did I care? They were super nice people who stood for things being different than what they are, and they were willing to put their lives on hold to try and change things. That was definitely good enough for me.

But it grew and grew, and by the time I went down there last Thursday, it had morphed into a well-organized city-within-a-city. All the things we’ve come to accept that the government can’t provide for us – child care, health care, food, public libraries – were there. It’s amazing to see all that stuff, which is the first to get cut in a budget crisis, was apparently considered to be of such importance that the protesters provided them to the public right away. I felt like I had been hit in my head: Oh right – this is exactly how it’s supposed to be. I used to know that… and then forgot.

Anyway. I’ve been going there as much as I can and trying to help out. I love that here was this idea (not original, I know) that I was playing around with on paper, and then here are these people actually trying to make another version work… and so now the drawings I’m making feel sort of in dialog with that. The people camped out at Zuccotti Park are revolutionaries, and my work isn’t – and isn’t meant to be. My work is about a process of thinking through things, playing with ideas, mixing things around and wondering, “what if?” I get to navel-gaze; the people in the park have to protect their computer equipment from rain, feed their supporters, and constantly explain their existence to doubters. But this to me is the wonderful thing that art can do – it can be this step back and this slowing down, and this playing around with ideas, just ever-so-slightly-removed from reality.

It’s a weird time in NYC, but it’s a good time, too.